Absence

A group of young UN soldiers in Lebanon enters service with pro-Israeli views and a naive outlook on war. They go through a radical change of heart as they witness and film the Qana massacre. They secure video evidence indicating that Israel deliberately bombed a UN camp killing 106 refugees.

Yallah! Underground follows some of today’s most influential and progressive artists in Arab underground culture from 2009 to 2013 and documents their work, dreams and fears in a time of great change for Arab societies. In a region full of tension, young Arab artists in the Middle East have struggled for years to express themselves freely and to promote more liberal attitudes within their societies. During the Arab Spring, like many others of this new generation, local artists had high hopes for the future and took part in the protests. However, after years of turmoil and instability, young Arabs now have to challenge both old and new problems, being torn between feelings of disillusion and a vague hope for a better future.

"Dabke Time" explores the background of the Dabke dance and specifically the Lebanese Dabke. Flimmaker Roshdi Alkadri interviews several subjects across two different villages in Lebanon to find out more about this popular dance

While living in a deserted valley in eastern Lebanon, seven-year-old Rahaf describes the wonders of her past, present and future – without knowing the limits of her own imagination.

An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

Eccomi ... Eccoti unfolds as a virtual road trip navigating between Italy and Lebanon. Conditioned to live in a long-distance relationship with his partner because of strict European visa regulations, the director patches together the shared moments in an attempt to create a possible day-to-day reality for their couple. With a lyrical, ambient soundscape set atop a dreamy, atmospheric visual style that oscillates between still photography and moving images, the film explores what it means to be gay in contemporary Beirut and existential discomfort that blocks one from reaching a sense of complete-ness. Does such in-completeness have to do, in particular, with being gay? Or is it related to a grander malaise endemic to the human condition?

Severely battered from the Beirut Port Explosion on August 4th, Minerva passed away eight days later. Her son Joseph, while still grieving for his loss, sunk into a long and absurd bureaucratic path through the inept system that disowned his mother as a victim of the blast. Minerva is gone. The explosion has snatched her soul, and the city walls have not yet recognized her as a martyr. There is no poster of her smiling face among those of the victims. Their faces are memories that will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Perhaps her son, devastated by her passing, seeks to etch her image into the city's memory. Perhaps he is seeking some confession to the crime. This is a place that casts out its children, whether dead or alive.

Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.

Wissam Charaf traces the recent history and identity of Lebanon through its political campaigns, PR imagery and pop videos.

In 1958, in Senegal, land of emigration, Zahia Salhab gave birth to her first child Ghassan. During the same period, Lebanon, their homeland, is driven into a significant local conflict, a preamble to the next civil war.

Filmed in Tripoli, Lebanon, Concrete Forms of Resistance is a documentary centred upon the city’s abandoned ‘Permanent International Fair’, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in the mid-1960s. Progress and crisis, labour and capital, material and memory, are reflected through a very intelligent rhyme between image and sound. The touching voice and words of Niemeyer as a call for life, and the beautiful camerawork as a weaving of ghosts in the present landscapes.

a state that used religion to control the mass. the mass reduced politics to the personal (social and domestic). religious shrines became political. And political figures became the new god. meanwhile, lebanon is collapsing. in this film, we are roaming within the lebanon with three individuals that are living the consequences of a failed state.

The meaty saga of Burger Baron, a rogue fast-food chain with mysterious origins and a cult following, run by a loose network of fiercely independent Arab Canadian immigrants.

Tribute to the Druze Kamal Jumblatt, Minister of Economy and Agriculture (1946) and founder of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) in 1949. He was one of the architects of the departure of President Bechara el-Khoury (1952), before playing a major role in the events of 1958. From 1960 to 1964, Kamal Jumblatt assumed, under the presidency of Fouad Chehab, various ministerial functions . . After the conflict of June 1967, he gradually approached the Palestinian organizations. In 1969 he became Minister of the Interior; in August 1970, he supported the election of Soleiman Frangié as President of the Republic. Following the Lebanese-Palestinian clashes of May 1973, he took sides against the head of state, established himself as the leader of the National Movement in 1975 and engaged in a revolutionary armed struggle against the Lebanese Front. Hostile to Syria's intervention in Lebanon, he broke with it (March 1976). He was assassinated near a Syrian checkpoint in 1977.

Lebanon is a country hijacked by sects, money, and power. While citizens long for a collective identity to thrive as a community, politicians use the sectarianism for their corrupt ambitions. Unless there is a change, Lebanon will be lost forever.

Directed by Bahij Hojeij, “Lebanon, Message from a Holy Land” visits Lebanon’s many ancient Christian holy sites. The documentary focuses especially on the Qadisha Valley, home to several historical monastaries and very old Christian churches.

Bahij Hojeij’s documentary studies the infamous Green Line between east and west Beirut during the civil war.

Beirut, Lebanon's capital has a long history of political and social unrest that still makes headlines today. Globe Trekker's Beirut City Guide captures the city in more optimistic days, two weeks before the latest outbreak of hostilities in Lebanon between Israeli and Hezbollah forces in July 2006. Globe Trekker Megan McCormick explores the neighborhoods of Basta, Solidere, Gemayze and the Hezbollah District and finds a city in the midst of regeneration. She gets a glimpse at Beirut's future when meeting up with a group of young Arabic hip hop artists, who are eager to live in peace and put the country's political troubles in the past.

As the Syrian war continues to leave entire generations without education, health care, or a state, Lost in Lebanon closely follows four Syrians during their relocation process. The resilience of this Syrian community, which currently makes up one fifth of the population in Lebanon, is astoundingly clear as its members work hard to collaborate, share resources, and advocate for themselves in a new land. With the Syrian conflict continuing to push across borders, lives are becoming increasingly desperate due to the devastating consequences of new visa laws that the Lebanese government has implemented, leaving families at risk of arrest, detention, and deportation. Despite these obstacles, the film encourages us to look beyond the staggering statistics of displaced refugees and focus on the individuals themselves.

Filmed in Beirut in the Spring of 1984, in many ways a letter about warfront.